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charles H.

charles H.

Joined on 01/11/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 10
Most Favorable Review

18 months and still rock solid @ 1866

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Well after reading some of the recent reviews I must chime in and say that this board has ran rock solid with DDR3-1866 speed Gskill Sniper Series 8 GB Memory. I do however use an FX8120 @ stock speeds but have overclocked to 4.5 Ghz with no problems.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: To those complaining about reduced core speed I want to remind you that this board may beed a Bos update to properly use the new FX chips. Also... turning off AMD Cool&Quite off in the Bios will force the CPU to run at its rated speed 100% of the time. This board paired with an AMD FX processor will allow ram to run at 1866 but only if the ram is rated at that speed and with the correct timings used. The timings MUST be adjusted in the bios to achieve the 1866 speed. All those complaining that their 1866 RAM is defaulting to 1600 or even 1333 needs to find the correct timings and adjust them manually. Also 1866 only works with 2 sticks in this board. So if your trying with 4 sticks your wasting your time.

Decent gaming Laptop

Aorus - 17.3" GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU - Intel Core i7-12700H  - 32GB Memory - 1 TB Gen4 SSD - Windows 11 Home - Gaming Laptop - 360 Hz IPS (AORUS 17 YE5-74US544SH )
Aorus - 17.3" GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU - Intel Core i7-12700H - 32GB Memory - 1 TB Gen4 SSD - Windows 11 Home - Gaming Laptop - 360 Hz IPS (AORUS 17 YE5-74US544SH )

Pros: Bought this for my Wife to play the Sims and Hogwarts Legacy and it does the job. She does light gaming but i wanted her to have a machine that would last for years so i opted for this beast of a system. The 3080 Ti alone will keep this machine churning out good FPS for years to come.

Cons: As some people have said... the power plug is in a very strange location. It's manageable but still feels awkward. Maybe move it to a far corner next time?

Overall Review: This machine is a powerhouse of performance and should be viable in new AAA titles for years to come.

12/16/2023

Cheap, works great for gaming drive.

Crucial BX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD, up to 540 MB/s - CT1000BX500SSD1
Crucial BX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD, up to 540 MB/s - CT1000BX500SSD1

Pros: Added to my sons pc for a second games drive.

Cons: None. Anyone that adds anything to this field is reaching and/or isn't knowledgeable about what they have purchased. This drive while being faster than a Hard disc is not and never will be the fastest SSD on the market. It's not ment for that. Its ment for a high speed storage drive if you already have an NVME OS drive. That being the case using this as a primary OS drive is fine if you have a HDD for a storage drive.

Overall Review: Would purchase again due to price and quality.

under 10 second boot

SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: Well I waited and waited for the price of SSD's to drop before purchasing one and now that these bad boys are around 150 bucks I couldn't pass up the chance to finally have an SSD in my gaming rig. This thing is FAST... and totally stomps my 1TB 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda in terms of boot speed and game loading.

Cons: Still not as cheap as traditional mechanical drives GB/per dollar. Not worth losing and egg over though.

Overall Review: I installed all of windows update files and such updates like SP1 for windows 7 would take 2-5 minutes to "configure" after restart but with this drive it takes less than 30 seconds. That's fast.

Best 780 Ti

MSI GTX 780Ti GAMING G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card
MSI GTX 780Ti GAMING G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card

Pros: So far so good, I haven't had any of the problems some of the people on this site have had with this card. I think most of those complaining about fan oil are those that are stupid enough to set the fan at 100% for long periods of time. I run SWTOR at MAX graphics @ 1080p for 60-110FPS solid. Planetside 2 runs 60+ maxed out with shadowplay recording in the background. Don't get mislead though, you need a powerful CPU pushing this thing so there are no bottlenecks. I currently run a 4770k [email protected] so there is no bottleneck period.

Cons: This is one of the better priced Ti's but its still $600+ which I think is too pricy. That being said I wanted to build a new system that would last me 6+ years and in order to do that I needed to choose a card that would still be beefy 5 years from now. This is that card.

Overall Review: The Titan isn't worth the cost.... You can go with 2 of these in SLI and stomp a Titan Z to pieces at half the cost.

Best board for Haswell from MSI

MSI Z87-G45 Gaming LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Pro Gaming with Killer Networking & Sound Blaster Intel Motherboard
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Pro Gaming with Killer Networking & Sound Blaster Intel Motherboard

Pros: Under 150 dollars and has all the overclocking options you need.

Cons: Has a Sound driver issue.... read below.

Overall Review: You have to uninstall the Microsoft sound driver BEFORE you install the MSI realtek drivers for the onboard sound. If you do not do this... the driver will have problems starting up. It wont detect your speakers and will shut down when you start programs that use the sound driver. Once this is done the sound works perfectly.